Stinkhorn (Phallus impudicus)

The Stinkhorn (Phallus impudicus) is usually smelt before it is seen. It starts as a soft white egg, partly buried in leaf litter, which splits to release a tall, spongy white stem topped by a cap coated in dark olive-green slime. The slime carries the spores and smells strongly of rotting meat, drawing in flies that carry the spores away. Once they have stripped it, a white honeycomb pattern is left on the cap.

It grows near dead wood and stumps of both broadleaf trees and conifers, and in mulched gardens, from summer into early winter. It is widespread and common everywhere.

The Dog Stinkhorn (Mutinus caninus) is smaller and slimmer, with an orange tip and a fainter smell, and the Sand Stinkhorn (Phallus hadriani) has a pinkish-violet egg and grows on sand dunes. The young egg is not poisonous, but it is rarely eaten.

Spore Print

Season

J

F

M

A

M

J

A

S

O

N

D

Native

non-toxic

Distribution

Widespread and common everywhere

Habitat

Associated with dead wood, stumps etc. of broadleaved and conifer trees

Etymology

Phallus is the Greek and Latin word for a penis, after its shape. impudicus is Latin for 'shameless' or 'immodest'.

Fruiting Body

It emerges from a white, egg-like peridium with a thick gelatinous layer under the skin. The spores are held in a sticky, dark olive mass on the cap-like head, with a web-like network hidden under the cap. Beneath the foul-smelling spore mass is a honeycomb-like structure, revealed once flies and other insects have dispersed it.